Tony Krvaric hates sea urchins

Tony Krvaric, chairman of the Republican Party of San Diego County, regularly tweets that he's not here to debate liberals, he's here to defeat them. But when he toured along with his kid's class on a field trip yesterday, it turned out he wasn't there to educate, but to obfuscate.

It's no secret that Krvaric doesn't put much stock in environmentalism; he brags about how he celebrates Earth Day by smoking cigars. But during a Kindergarten trip to Birch Aquarium, Krvaric fired off a series of live tweets, hating on the institution. He accused the aquarium of everything from pushing a socialist agenda to being overly sympathetic to the mental health of aquatic life.

We're not exactly sure what Krvaric was expecting. Birch Aquarium is run by the Scripps Institute for Oceanography, an organization with scientists that have been at the forefront of climate-change research and its projected impacts on global ocean levels. In fact, Scripps' California Climate Change Center was the first major research institute to receive state funding for this kind of scientific investigation. Presenting the outcome of that research in an easy-to-understand way is kind of the whole point.

We thought it was only fair to ask Birch Aquarium for its response. Here's the emailed statement from executive director Nigella Hillgarth:

All of the exhibits at Birch Aquarium at Scripps are based on the best and most accurate scientific knowledge, direct from our scientists at the world-renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Our docents are specially trained to monitor the interactions between our marine life and the public. It is important that we protect and care for our local wildlife, whether in an aquarium or in its natural environment, and that we convey that message to our children.

We don’t know the particulars of the interaction, but, in general, marine life live in sensitive environmental habitats and improper handling can cause harm.

We also asked how they defined "stress" in a sea urchin.

Hillgarth's response: "Stress is anything that causes the natural behavior and/or physiology of an animal to be modified in a detrimental way."

Perhaps that's how Krvaric felt when the creationist museum packed up and left Santee.